1) CUES & SIGNALS
The interdisciplinary study of interpersonal communication
Defining ‘communication’
PRELIMINARY DEFINITIONS
• Communication connects senders and receivers
• Cue = a thing said or done by a director that serves to an actor to enter or to begin their action
→ the concept refers to receiver activity (iets waar de ontvanger op reageert)
• Signal = a thing said or done that is used to convey (overbrengen) information to someone else
→ the concept refers to a sender activity
Defining ‘communication’the classic way
Lasswell’s approach: some problems
1. Rather unidirectional, while IPC generally is bidirectional or even multidirectional.
2. Concepts like ‘channel’ or ‘medium’: rather vague. (massamedia: radio, maar welk bij face-to-face?)
3. ‘Effect’ is more than merely feedback. (kan ook verandering van gedrag veroorzaken)
4. Focus on who, what, where & when, but no attention is paid to how (cues and signals) and why.
5. Communication as information transfer between sender and receiver, yet the brain is not an
information processor, but a meaning processor !!!
Is the brain an information processor?
Mona Lisa: Same concept, idea, meaning but totally different information!
Information or meaning?
Christof Koch - fMRI
• Pictures of celebrities (Bart Simpson, Bill Gates, Halle Berry, etc.) → for each celebrity, a different set
of neurons lit up.
• The ‘Halle-Berry-Neurons’ were activated:
o Whether she was viewed from the left or the right or the front
o With or without a hat or sunglasses
o Smiling or not
o With or without her Cat Woman costume
o Or even with only the words ‘Halle Berry’ shown
,Note: fMRI scanner
Christof Koch
• As long as the meaning of ‘Halle Berry’ is recognizable, the specific neurons fire (and light up on the
fMRI).
• Cf. Phil Barden (Decoded, p.88): ‘Our brain not only answers the question ‘what is it?’ but in addition
decodes what a signal means, what it stands for.’
Cf. definition of a sign: something that stands for something else (the referent) and to which we attach
meaning → we use signs to communicate, to create meaning in terms of cues or signals
The brain is a meaning (or sign) processor,not (merely) an information processor !
But how do we create meaning?
A better definition of ‘communication’ focusing on ‘meaning’
Cues & signals redefined
CUES
= THE VERBAL AND/OR NONVERBAL SIGNS A RECEIVER USES TO CREATE MEANING OUT OF THE
PHYSICAL AND/OR SOCIAL WORLD (wolken → regen)
SIGNALS
= THE SIGNS A SENDER CREATES FOR STIMULATING MEANING IN THE MIND OF ANOTHER PERSON
(OR PERSONS)
Why a course on IPC in a curriculum dominated by MMC (massamediale communicatie) ?
1. MMC builds on IPC processes. It even often boils down to little more than mediated IPC.
2. Effects of MMC can be highly impacted by aspects of IPC.
1. MMC largely boils down to IPC
Some food for thought: is it MMC or IPC?
• Communication via Outlook, Facebook, Instagram, Whatsapp, …
• Online classes or meetings via Teams, Zoom, …
• Advertising versus personal selling versus direct mail
• Watching an episode of Friends: you are there with them
• Wim De Vilder reading the news: regarding the camera, not his sheet (cf. Netflix: News of the World)
, IPC = a psychological meaning transfer process
MMC = a psychological meaning transfer process
➔ MMC largely boils down to IPC
• Is MMC not just ‘mediated’ IPC (where the mediation provides some additional communication
devices such as camera angle, montage, lighting, etc.) ???
• Is there a different ‘psychology’ – since communication is first and foremost a psychological
process – underlying MMC, and how could this have evolved so quickly, given the extremely
recent rise of modern mass media in human history ??? Even if cave art is regarded as an ancient
mass medium (generally, the numerous paintings and engravings found in caves and shelters date
back to the Ice Age (Upper Paleolithic), roughly between 40,000 and 14,000 years ago), this is too
short for evolutionary processes to have significant results.
2. IPC also impacts MMC effects
Cf. my experiments on advertising:
a. Using faces (one of the main nonverbal IPC systems) in advertising helps to attract attention
Faces are used in advertising extremely often:
▪ Quantitative content analysis of 39 Flemish magazines
▪ → 883 advertisements
▪ Trained encoders (Cohen’s Kappa = 0,682 / p=0,000) analysed the ads
▪ 63% of all the ads contained a face (while you don’t exactly need a face to sell bank
services, insurances, cars, cell phones, butter, gasoline, newspapers, sneakers, educational
programs, mayonaise, jelly, sugar, fruit juices, soft drinks, liquors, cigarettes, perfumes,
jewelry, furniture, …) !!!
1. Pretest
• 200 images rated on likeability (N=80)
• Goal: images with similar likeability
2. Eye Tracking
• 15 screens with 4 images: only one contains a face
• 3 seconds exposure
• 140 young adults (aged 18-25; 70 males and 70 females)
➔ Heatmaps: faces are visual magnets!
, • AIO (Area Of Interest) results
The relative attention that a face demands is much higher than its relative size.
▪ Mean size of all faces = 2,53% of screen surface
▪ Mean attention to these faces = 11,28% of observation time
→ Relative attention time is 4,45 times higher than relative size of the face on the screen!
• Faces are visual magnets because they contain lots of cues (cf. infra)
o Species
o Age
o Sex
o Emotions
o Identity
o Personality ?
o Etnicity
o Kin relatedness
o Health
o …
o Cf. infra
• Applications in packaging
• Faces as visual magnets in packaging
b. Nonverbal IPC cues in advertising have a clear impact on ad-likeability (that is, on liking the ad more
or liking the ad less)
Physical appearance (one of the nonverbal IPC systems) cues inserted/enhanced in the ads so as to
make the Emotionally Competent Stimuli more emotionally competent (that is, leading to higher
ad-likeability scores)
• Direct goal: influencing the primary affective reaction
• Communication goal: higher ad-likeability (ad attitude)
• Final goal: higher brand-likeability (brand attitude), sales etc.
• Emotionally competent stimuli
Why Coca-Cola created Santa Claus out of Saint Nicholas: body type & colour (Haddon
Sundblom)
More Coca-Cola ECS …
• Simpler ECS used by many marketers: e.g. attractive models in ads
The interdisciplinary study of interpersonal communication
Defining ‘communication’
PRELIMINARY DEFINITIONS
• Communication connects senders and receivers
• Cue = a thing said or done by a director that serves to an actor to enter or to begin their action
→ the concept refers to receiver activity (iets waar de ontvanger op reageert)
• Signal = a thing said or done that is used to convey (overbrengen) information to someone else
→ the concept refers to a sender activity
Defining ‘communication’the classic way
Lasswell’s approach: some problems
1. Rather unidirectional, while IPC generally is bidirectional or even multidirectional.
2. Concepts like ‘channel’ or ‘medium’: rather vague. (massamedia: radio, maar welk bij face-to-face?)
3. ‘Effect’ is more than merely feedback. (kan ook verandering van gedrag veroorzaken)
4. Focus on who, what, where & when, but no attention is paid to how (cues and signals) and why.
5. Communication as information transfer between sender and receiver, yet the brain is not an
information processor, but a meaning processor !!!
Is the brain an information processor?
Mona Lisa: Same concept, idea, meaning but totally different information!
Information or meaning?
Christof Koch - fMRI
• Pictures of celebrities (Bart Simpson, Bill Gates, Halle Berry, etc.) → for each celebrity, a different set
of neurons lit up.
• The ‘Halle-Berry-Neurons’ were activated:
o Whether she was viewed from the left or the right or the front
o With or without a hat or sunglasses
o Smiling or not
o With or without her Cat Woman costume
o Or even with only the words ‘Halle Berry’ shown
,Note: fMRI scanner
Christof Koch
• As long as the meaning of ‘Halle Berry’ is recognizable, the specific neurons fire (and light up on the
fMRI).
• Cf. Phil Barden (Decoded, p.88): ‘Our brain not only answers the question ‘what is it?’ but in addition
decodes what a signal means, what it stands for.’
Cf. definition of a sign: something that stands for something else (the referent) and to which we attach
meaning → we use signs to communicate, to create meaning in terms of cues or signals
The brain is a meaning (or sign) processor,not (merely) an information processor !
But how do we create meaning?
A better definition of ‘communication’ focusing on ‘meaning’
Cues & signals redefined
CUES
= THE VERBAL AND/OR NONVERBAL SIGNS A RECEIVER USES TO CREATE MEANING OUT OF THE
PHYSICAL AND/OR SOCIAL WORLD (wolken → regen)
SIGNALS
= THE SIGNS A SENDER CREATES FOR STIMULATING MEANING IN THE MIND OF ANOTHER PERSON
(OR PERSONS)
Why a course on IPC in a curriculum dominated by MMC (massamediale communicatie) ?
1. MMC builds on IPC processes. It even often boils down to little more than mediated IPC.
2. Effects of MMC can be highly impacted by aspects of IPC.
1. MMC largely boils down to IPC
Some food for thought: is it MMC or IPC?
• Communication via Outlook, Facebook, Instagram, Whatsapp, …
• Online classes or meetings via Teams, Zoom, …
• Advertising versus personal selling versus direct mail
• Watching an episode of Friends: you are there with them
• Wim De Vilder reading the news: regarding the camera, not his sheet (cf. Netflix: News of the World)
, IPC = a psychological meaning transfer process
MMC = a psychological meaning transfer process
➔ MMC largely boils down to IPC
• Is MMC not just ‘mediated’ IPC (where the mediation provides some additional communication
devices such as camera angle, montage, lighting, etc.) ???
• Is there a different ‘psychology’ – since communication is first and foremost a psychological
process – underlying MMC, and how could this have evolved so quickly, given the extremely
recent rise of modern mass media in human history ??? Even if cave art is regarded as an ancient
mass medium (generally, the numerous paintings and engravings found in caves and shelters date
back to the Ice Age (Upper Paleolithic), roughly between 40,000 and 14,000 years ago), this is too
short for evolutionary processes to have significant results.
2. IPC also impacts MMC effects
Cf. my experiments on advertising:
a. Using faces (one of the main nonverbal IPC systems) in advertising helps to attract attention
Faces are used in advertising extremely often:
▪ Quantitative content analysis of 39 Flemish magazines
▪ → 883 advertisements
▪ Trained encoders (Cohen’s Kappa = 0,682 / p=0,000) analysed the ads
▪ 63% of all the ads contained a face (while you don’t exactly need a face to sell bank
services, insurances, cars, cell phones, butter, gasoline, newspapers, sneakers, educational
programs, mayonaise, jelly, sugar, fruit juices, soft drinks, liquors, cigarettes, perfumes,
jewelry, furniture, …) !!!
1. Pretest
• 200 images rated on likeability (N=80)
• Goal: images with similar likeability
2. Eye Tracking
• 15 screens with 4 images: only one contains a face
• 3 seconds exposure
• 140 young adults (aged 18-25; 70 males and 70 females)
➔ Heatmaps: faces are visual magnets!
, • AIO (Area Of Interest) results
The relative attention that a face demands is much higher than its relative size.
▪ Mean size of all faces = 2,53% of screen surface
▪ Mean attention to these faces = 11,28% of observation time
→ Relative attention time is 4,45 times higher than relative size of the face on the screen!
• Faces are visual magnets because they contain lots of cues (cf. infra)
o Species
o Age
o Sex
o Emotions
o Identity
o Personality ?
o Etnicity
o Kin relatedness
o Health
o …
o Cf. infra
• Applications in packaging
• Faces as visual magnets in packaging
b. Nonverbal IPC cues in advertising have a clear impact on ad-likeability (that is, on liking the ad more
or liking the ad less)
Physical appearance (one of the nonverbal IPC systems) cues inserted/enhanced in the ads so as to
make the Emotionally Competent Stimuli more emotionally competent (that is, leading to higher
ad-likeability scores)
• Direct goal: influencing the primary affective reaction
• Communication goal: higher ad-likeability (ad attitude)
• Final goal: higher brand-likeability (brand attitude), sales etc.
• Emotionally competent stimuli
Why Coca-Cola created Santa Claus out of Saint Nicholas: body type & colour (Haddon
Sundblom)
More Coca-Cola ECS …
• Simpler ECS used by many marketers: e.g. attractive models in ads
